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24/192 music downloads make no sense

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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#111

Post by hamiltonkibbe »

cynicalkane wrote: post #84
rplst8 wrote: post #83

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much. That said, the…

Nope. Intermodulation distortion for out-of-range frequencies is inaudible. The 1hz beat you are hearing is not a 1hz sound wave, it's a 1000.5hz sound wave becoming louder and softer once per second. The comparison of a 1hz beat to a 1hz sound should be absurd on its face: you need about 20-30hz to become audible, and it's a low rumble more felt than heard. Very low frequencies sound absolutely nothing like intermod…

Intermodulation creates both sum and difference frequencies, the latter can certainly fall into the audible spectrum, assuming the ultrasonic frequencies are within the passband of your recording medium. The sum component can also alias back into the passband as well...

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#112

Post by lmm »

ska wrote: post #56
lmm wrote: post #45

Dithering is a horrible thing to be doing, and 44.1 is an awkward rate. So while I agree that 192khz is dumb, 24/48 is a better standard than CD.

No, dithering (properly) is usually what you should be doing when you quantize. See Vanderkooy and Lipshitz 1987 for why.

Paper seems to be paywalled. I can't imagine any possible purpose for dithering before encoding that wouldn't be better served by dithering on playback.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#113

Post by shmageggy »

tammer wrote: post #96
kinghajj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. So I'm not sure if overcompression is necessary for newer songs, but rather that it's just what the mass market has become accustomed to because of the loudness war.

It's a common misconception that vinyl necessarily imparts all possible audio benefits to whatever is pressed into it. Now, I'm not Gaga's recording engineer, and for all I know you're absolutely right and her & her team remastered each track without compression for the vinyl pressing. Considering how rare such a process is in industry recording, however, I doubt it. I assume that really the difference you're hearing…

Mastering for vinyl is very common in the industry. I don't have time to dig up a reference right now, but the medium has different constraints than digital so is usually mastered separately, especially for big budget stuff. The differing constraints are mainly that while CD has a hard amplitude limit (hence brickwall limiting), the constraint on vinyl is not hard in the same way -- it mostly has to do with amplitude of low frequencies and skipping grooves.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#114

Post by jlarocco »

niels_olson wrote: post #61
ska wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is pretty clear about this too - higher bitdepths and sampling rates can be quite useful in mixing and recording situations. They're pointless for playback.

> higher bitdepths and sampling rates can be quite useful in mixing That is really the central issue. It's much like imaging since the time of Ansel Adams: the sensor can capture more dynamic range than the human eye can experience. The producer may have use for that range when editing, but the audience will never know what was -- may have been -- missed. And we're not talking about limits of reproduction. We're talk…

I don't know about music and audio, but your photography comparison is incorrect for two reasons.

First, as msandford pointed out, the human eye has significantly better dynamic range than image sensors. Technically, our eyes have a lower range at any specific instant, but due to the way our eyes work we effectively see upwards of 20 stops of dynamic range. The best sensors available (in medium format cameras, pro-DSLRs, etc) can only capture 14-15 stops.

Second, some black and white films have a better dynamic range than digital sensors, so it's also not the case that digital is strictly better. 18-20 stops isn't unheard of for some types of film.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#115

Post by hamiltonkibbe »

weinzierl wrote: post #104

Because digital filters have few of the practical limitations of an analog filter, we can complete the anti-aliasing process with greater efficiency and precision digitally. The very high rate raw digital signal passes through a digital anti-aliasing filter, which has no trouble fitting a transition band into a tight space. I always thought digital anti-aliasing filters were creatures from a fairy-tale world. Much ta…

Yes, but obviously they don't work if your signal is already aliased. The most common example would be when decimating a signal, e.g using a digital filter with a cutoff at 22khz before down sampling from 192kHz to 44.1kHz. This is often realized in a single step... Check out polyphase interpolation/decimation if you're interested in learning more

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#116

Post by [deleted] »

weinzierl wrote: post #104

Because digital filters have few of the practical limitations of an analog filter, we can complete the anti-aliasing process with greater efficiency and precision digitally. The very high rate raw digital signal passes through a digital anti-aliasing filter, which has no trouble fitting a transition band into a tight space. I always thought digital anti-aliasing filters were creatures from a fairy-tale world. Much ta…

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#117

Post by thescriptkiddie »

cynicalkane wrote: post #84
rplst8 wrote: post #83

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much. That said, the…

Nope. Intermodulation distortion for out-of-range frequencies is inaudible. The 1hz beat you are hearing is not a 1hz sound wave, it's a 1000.5hz sound wave becoming louder and softer once per second. The comparison of a 1hz beat to a 1hz sound should be absurd on its face: you need about 20-30hz to become audible, and it's a low rumble more felt than heard. Very low frequencies sound absolutely nothing like intermod…

Is there a difference? Audio is one-dimensional, frequency is just the derivative of amplitude. An arbitrarily high frequency sound wave becoming louder and softer 440 times per second is just as much an A as a 440 Hz sound wave at constant volume. A lot of cheap audio gear even uses a "1-bit DAC" that is just very high frequency PWM.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#118

Post by some-guy »

derefr wrote: post #90
some-guy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is specifying 24/192 as useless for playback quality only. Halfway down he addresses the benefits of 24/192 for the sake of mixing and mastering different digital audio signals, but a final mix offers no benefit to the human listener when choosing between 16bit/44Khz and 24bit/192Khz.

What I was trying to get across is: every file has two potential purposes—listening and serving as input for sampling. So, if we care about enabling "remix culture", wouldn't make sense to offer a "24/192 FLAC" option for download, push DVDA over CD, etc., anyway? I've never seen the hype from artists about 24/192 as being about better listening experience. It's about handing their consumers a better master so as to…

Yeah I think that's not obvious from the title of the article: 24/192 are useful downloads for the sake of editing.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#119

Post by earlz »

shmageggy wrote: post #113
tammer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common misconception that vinyl necessarily imparts all possible audio benefits to whatever is pressed into it. Now, I'm not Gaga's recording engineer, and for all I know you're absolutely right and her & her team remastered each track without compression for the vinyl pressing. Considering how rare such a process is in industry recording, however, I doubt it. I assume that really the difference you're hearing…

Mastering for vinyl is very common in the industry. I don't have time to dig up a reference right now, but the medium has different constraints than digital so is usually mastered separately, especially for big budget stuff. The differing constraints are mainly that while CD has a hard amplitude limit (hence brickwall limiting), the constraint on vinyl is not hard in the same way -- it mostly has to do with amplitude…

My understanding is that with vinyl, if the signal has too high of an RMS at low frequencies the needle can literally skip off the groove, and for this reason vinyl can't necessarily be as compressed and loud..

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#120

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #112
ska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, dithering (properly) is usually what you should be doing when you quantize. See Vanderkooy and Lipshitz 1987 for why.

Paper seems to be paywalled. I can't imagine any possible purpose for dithering before encoding that wouldn't be better served by dithering on playback.

[deleted]
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